The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery (1966)

Too much of everything

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

THE GREAT ST. TRINIAN'S TRAIN ROBBERY was the last of the St. Trinian's quartet (until the unwise attempt at revamping the series in 1980 with WILDCATS) and, to my mind, the most entertaining of the bunch. Whereas the earlier instalments of the 1950s were in black and white, quite slow moving and dated in their humour - nope, I don't find the sight of Alistair Sim in drag particularly funny - this is more like the British comedy films of the '60s and '70s that I know and love.Headlining the cast is Frankie Howerd - hooray! - as a criminal mastermind who's successfully carried out a train robbery with his crooked gang, including plenty of familiar faces (such as Reg Varney of ON THE BUSES fame). The only problem is that the loot is hidden in an old building now inhabited by the St. Trinian's gang, so retrieving it is going to be tricky.What follows is a quirky escapade full of the usual hooliganism and outrageous shenanigans as a battle of wits ensues between schoolgirls, teachers and robbers. George Cole is back as Flash Harry, although as usual he has little to do, but Dora Bryan is great value as quirky headmistress Amber Spottiswood. Watch out too for Eric Barker, Michael Ripper and Terry Scott popping up in brief roles.Things really pick up for the extended climax set on the train tracks. Steam trains and carriages are flying back and forth to great effect and the film reaches farcical levels at this point, ending on a high.

As youngsters, there are certain things that we all believe in. Father Christmas. The Easter Bunny. The Tooth Fairy. Not me, though. I was different - I believed in St. Trinian's school. I was convinced in fact until I was at least twenty that this school was actually a real place. I'm not a stupid person by any means, so it must have been because I wanted such a place to exist that I spent most of my time in the library browsing phone directories in a fruitless effort to discover exactly where it was. I thought I had it narrowed down to the Home Counties somewhere in Hertfordshire or Bedfordshire, and was quite prepared to try and visit the place in person and leer at all those sixth-form schoolgirls in their gym-slips, stockings and suspenders. The best day of my life was probably when we had a fancy dress day at school and a couple of my female class-mates turned up in a replica uniform, and boy, did they look good! I'm not sure what the teachers thought, because they were only about thirteen I should think, and they definitely were wearing the stockings and suspenders! These days of course the politically correct brigade would do all they can to prevent young girls dressing like this (even though it was all in good fun and for charity) and these films are often treated in the same way by many reviewers - with scorn and ridicule. The "girls" in the film who are wearing the full "sixth form" stockings and suspenders style uniform are of course well over the age of sixteen and into adulthood, though that doesn't stop some people wondering that maybe films like this encourage paedophilia and turning young girls into sex objects. Maybe there are some dangerous people out there who get a hard-on over uniforms and schoolgirls by watching this film, but I would hope that most, like me, were schoolboys themselves when they first saw this film, and that kind of makes it alright. It's all a bit of harmless fun, and like the "Carry On" films and other more politically incorrect 'stockings and suspenders' stuff where women are shown as sex objects first and characters after (Vicki Michele from "Allo Allo" is a good example), it's true to say they don't make stuff like this any more.St. Trinian's itself, the brainchild of artist Ronald Searle (as I later discovered!), is seen here for the first time in colour. This, "The Great Train Robbery", is the fourth in the series. A little-known and less-often seen fifth film from 1980 is "The Wildcats of St. Trinian's". As is usual with long-running franchises such as this, the quality does tale of noticeably with each instalment. This film, though not in the same league as the first "Belles of St. Trinians" in 1954, comes across as "Citizen Kane" in comparison to the very weak "Wildcats" entry in 1980. The main advantage this has over the first three is probably the fact that it is in colour.Unlike most people, I happen to think that St. Trinians rocks. I always have done. I wanted to go to school there. I still do. Words cannot describe how disappointed I was when I found out it didn't really exist. In this day and age of political correctness, it probably never will again - and that's a bit sad. 7/10

In my review of PURE HELL OF ST TRINIANS I mentioned that the comedy is very much dated when watched today . I guess the idea with THE GREAT ST TRINIANS TRAIN ROBBERY was to update it to the 1960s : It references the great train robbery of 1964 ( Interesting to note the connection with THUNDERBALL ) , it mentions " a new Labour government correcting the mismangement of 13 years of Tory misrule " and the movie is shot in colour with a new title tune . However despite these attempts to make it accessible to a cinema audience in 1966 ( Who would have gone to the cinema to watch a black and white movie ? ) this film suffers from the other failings of the series - it's badly plotted with characters and situations coming and going with little focus . like the other movies featuring the pupils from hell there is little screen time given to the eponymous girl pupils who seem to be there as a plot device more than anything else and even in 1966 native audiences would have probably found the parochial humour too British when compared to American financed Brit productions like DR NO , ZULU and ALFIE thereby dating this movie as soon as it came out

I really wasn't expecting to enjoy this movie. After all, the previous film in this series, 'The Pure Hell Of' was a bit of a disappointment and the question was, six years later, could this movie get the series back on track?The answer is yes, 'The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery', after a slightly slow start, is a very funny movie, the funniest in the series since 'Blue Murder'. Learning from the mistakes of 'Pure Hell', this movie returns to the school-based comedy that we all know and love.It has its faults, of course. For example some of the series' most familiar faces are absent (there is no Alistair Sim or Joyce Grenfell, for example), while a sadly ill-looking Eric Barker appears only for a few seconds. But all in all, the influx of new faces (including the likes of Frankie Howerd and Dora Bryan) works to the movie's advantage. Also the rail track capers that conclude the movie are very funny indeed.The less said about the awful theme song, the better I think, but any movie that contains the line 'Knock them about democratically' deserves to be remembered.